Catholic Church Facing Spiritual Competition

Summary

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WASHINGTON -- Two years ago, Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes, who was a strong candidate for the papacy after the death of John Paul II, stunned everyone at a bishops' synod when he said, "How much longer will Brazil continue to be a Catholic nation?"

Pope Benedict XVI's visit last week to Brazil, the world's largest Catholic nation, echoed in many ways the anguish of Cardinal Hummes and, by extension, of bishops across Latin America, where the Catholic Church has lost about 20 percent of its followers to various evangelical groups in recent decades. The pope's open condemnation of the "sects," as he calls the Pentecostal groups and other evangelical denominations, is a clear acknowledgement from the Vatican that the world's largest Catholic "reserve" is under threat from spiritual competitors.

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Extract

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Catholic Church Facing Spiritual Competition

The threat is not all that recent. Although Protestantism managed to sneak into Latin America as far back as colonial times, when Martin Luther's teachings circulated in clandestine form around the cont...

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